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A Tale Of Two Cats

Yes this IS the Dogster Blog but as I’ve said before, we love our Catsters too! This is an absolutely delightful story about two Catsters as told to them by their furdad James Yanni. This story is on Titania’s and Oberon‘s Catster pages.

The Tale Of Titania Cat And Oberon Cat

Hi. My name is Titania. That’s pronounced “Tuh-tahn-ya”, not “Tie-tain-ee-uh”. I’m named for the Queen of the Fairies in some old play or something. That’s the name my humans gave me, obviously. There’s not much point in my telling you my real cat name; you couldn’t pronounce it, and probably couldn’t tell it apart from the sentence, “My food dish is empty,” in cat talk.

My brother is Oberon, which is the King of the Fairies in that same old play. He’s a bit larger than I am, grey with the same white markings that I have. Sad to say, he doesn’t make nearly as good a king, of fairies, cats, or otherwise, as I do a queen. Not to say anything bad about him, mind you, but he’s not the most kingly type; I think he could probably be dominated by a particularly forceful cotton ball. Or maybe one that wasn’t particularly forceful. And he’s not the brightest kitty in the litter, either, not that that keeps him from being king like. And both of these lacks on his part lead to the story I’m about to tell you.

It happened many years ago, when we were both much younger. Mind you, even then we weren’t exactly YOUNG, but now we’re both elderly kitties. Then we were sort of middle-aged. (We’re the same age, being from the same litter; as of last May, we were sixteen, which in kitty years is something like seventy-five for a human.) Anyway, our human had to move out of his home, and was going to be staying temporarily with a friend, who already had two cats living with him. He didn’t want to impose any more than he already was, so rather than moving us with him, he asked his girlfriend to put us up for a while. Of course, there were already two cats living with HER, too, but she had a bigger place, and anyway he was more willing to ask the favor of her. She agreed, but it turns out that the cats at her place weren’t real happy with the arrangement.They didn’t feel that the place was big enough for four cats. We tried to tell them that it was only temporary, but they didn’t want to listen.

To be honest, I can’t say that I blame them. It was THEIR house, after all, and nobody had asked THEM whether they minded company. Still, it made for an uncomfortable situation for Oberon and me. I managed okay; I just stayed out of their way as much as possible, and dealt with the verbal abuse when I couldn’t avoid them. I made it plain, though, that I wouldn’t put up with them getting physical with me, and they respected that.

Oberon, on the other hand, was really upset, and couldn’t convincingly demonstrate that he could defend himself, so they really picked on him something fierce. They didn’t actually do him any harm, but they were always chasing him away from the food dish (even though there was plenty there for all of us), swatting him on the nose, biting his ears, and loudly threatening to do much worse.

So one day, when one of the humans living there left the door slightly ajar, Oberon made a break for it. Ran off into the woods. In some ways, this made life easier for me, ’cause the place was one cat less crowded now. On the other hand, in some ways it made things worse, because I was the ONLY unwelcome cat, instead of there being an easier mark handy for them to take their frustrations out on.

But in any case, I missed my brother. At first, I figured he’d be back soon enough; “Mighty Hunter” is not a role he plays well, not being bright enough to outsmart a rutebaga, much less something edible and comparatively smart, like a cricket or a beetle. So I figured that once he got hungry enough, he’d be back.

Then, after a couple of days, I figured that the humans would go out and find him; I heard them talking about it upstairs (we mostly lived in the basement.)

But eventually it became obvious that he wasn’t coming back on his own, and that the humans had given up on finding him. So after a few weeks, when somebody again left the door between the garage and the basement ajar, and the garage door open, I took my chance and went out to find him myself. It wasn’t really very hard; he was barely a quarter of a mile away (the entire woods up there wasn’t really big enough to hide in; I’ll never understand why the humans had so much trouble) and he wasn’t really trying to hide anyway (not that he was bright enough to hide successfully if he wanted to). He was just lost.

Lost! Less than a mile from where he came from, and he couldn’t find his way back. A disgrace to cats everywhere. Still, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him; he looked half starved. I gave him a piece of my mind anyway, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and dragged him back to the property line of our temporary housing. “There! That one!” I growled, and gave him a nip on the behind out of frustration. “Go on! It smells like they’ve even put out food for us.”

Well, after being without a good meal for so long, he was even more timid than usual. He was afraid not to go back, thanks to me, but was still afraid of the resident cats, and afraid that the people would be upset with him, so it was a couple of days before he’d let our humans pick him up and take him inside. He did eat the cat food that they left out, though, and that gradually calmed him down. (It’s amazing what a bit of food will do to calm down a skittish cat.) So after they finally managed to get him inside, I stayed out another couple of days just to explore for a bit, and then wandered on up, knocked on the door, and asked politely to be let back in. The humans were only too happy to oblige, and it turns out that by then, our human had a place that he could keep us at and we didn’t have to stay with our unwilling hosts.

So it all worked out okay in the end, but only because I didn’t depend on any humans to do a cat’s job.